


The History of Us

by justmeandmysillystuff



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Angst, Fluff, Happy Ending, Homophobia, Hurt/Comfort, I promise the end is nice just bare with me the first chapters, M/M, Medieval AU, Reincarnation, Victorian era, Victuuri falling in love in every century, WW2, they are soulmates, victorian au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-03
Updated: 2017-09-23
Packaged: 2018-12-23 14:39:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11991831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justmeandmysillystuff/pseuds/justmeandmysillystuff
Summary: In the infinite line that is the universe, Viktor and Yuuri will find each other and fall in love, through thick and thin, over and over again.Each chapter is a differen year, a different century, and a different setting for the same, boundless love.





	1. XV Century

**Author's Note:**

> Hello!! Im really sorry for the angst!!! I promise they will have happy moments! History is just cruel, but the future migh be kinder.

As soon as he heard the news, Yuuri crossed the entire village in a senseless run. He bumped into passerby and peddlers, ladies with baskets filled with fresh made bread, he jumped and dodged a few chicken walking in his way, and left behind the small, murky workshop and the smell of sawdust.  
  
He would have preferred it was him who told him. He would have preferred to hear it from his own mouth, his own voice, his own picking of words that would have made the news so vague and meaningless. So trivial. Viktor had always known how to fool him, and there was nothing Yuuri wished more intensely in that moment that being indisputably fool.  
  
Picturing it, picturing Viktor say those words, brought an ambiguous, bittersweet feeling. That face, his face, always so noble and benign. Those words, venomous and rotten, violent. They didn’t fit. Hearing the news coming from his perfect, pale lips, would have been as disconcerting as cutting a ripe apple and see it bleed.  
  
He could hear his family calling after him, even though it was maybe just his imagination by then. His head echoing the concerned voices he had left behind meters and meters away, his memory stuck in the same instant his world had fallen apart and acting it on repeat. The sound of his sister sawing in the corner, the particles of sawdust flying over his vision and sticking onto his lashes, his parents puzzled faces and Vicchan barking at the stranger that appeared at the carpentry’s door.  
  
_“Yuuri, son, are you ok?”_  
  
_“Who was it?”_  
  
_“You look pale”_  
  
A cart almost ran over him and he was forced to stop. His heels sunk in the dry soil of the road and his body jerked forwards by the sudden brake, instinctively; only realizing he almost got ran over once he found himself in a cloud of dust, hearing the sounds of neighing and the protests of the already distant carter.  
  
It wasn’t only his feet that stopped their every motion, but his entire body seemed to respond to the command. His lungs, his heart, his throbbing brain, they all felt into a sudden halt as they tried to remember their function. Yuuri used that pause to catch his breath, from both the running and the scare, looking around like a frightened animal. He didn’t know where he was. In fact, he hadn’t known where he was even going until he saw the contour of towers in the horizon. Distant colorful flags, waving in the distance.  
  
He hadn’t noticed he was looking for him, until he found himself in his side of town.  
  
Now the atmosphere made more sense, the brighter dresses and the looks of menace. It was usually the other way around, it was Viktor who came to visit him to the village. Because an ordinary artisan walking among nobility was nothing but a cockroach. But, on the other hand, a knight riding through the poor streets of the markets was the picture of a miracle.  
  
“Where do you think you are?” A tall, husky man grabbed him by the shoulder, keeping him from walking further into nobility lands “You are a peasant, aren’t you? You should be working the land! We need provisions! Don’t you know we are getting into war?”  
  
Hearing it again, being reminded of it, was nothing like pressing a finger on the sore. It was creating a whole new wound, right next to the last one, still unhealed.  
  
“I’m an artisan!” He said, feeling the strain of tears in his voice “I need to see one of Lord Giacometti’s knights!”  
  
The man, who was wearing one of the kingdom’s armors, pushed him by the shoulder and snorted dismissively.  
  
“Go back to your workshop, knights have no time for you! They’ll be leaving tomorrow”  
  
Yuuri swallowed a mouthful of air that felt solid, and it fell to his stomach like a stone.  
  
“Please” The beg jumped from his trembling lips “Please, don’t make me leave, I need to…”  
  
He raised his head, trying to find some mercy within those sharp eyes. Instead, he found the edge of a sword.  
  
“Get out”  
  
Yuuri felt like a vase someone broke and rearranged badly. His heart was beating at his stomach, his entrails were clogging his throat, and his eyes refused to show him nothing but his memory’s cruel caprices: Viktor.  
  
As he took the long way home through the forest, he couldn’t help but seeing everything as a reminder. The trees, within wich they used to play hide and seek as kids. The branches in the ground they used to pick to light bonfires. The mushrooms, once Viktor insisted some of those were edible, and ended up sick for a week. The sky? His eyes. The wind? His flaming hair, before he got it cut. The ground under his feet? The muddy footprints of their boots during long walks, followed by the even horseshoes of his stallion Makkachin. If he closed his eyes, it was even worst. Darkness brought memories of unlit candles and dark rooms, tangled limbs and sloppy kisses as they silently made love.  
  
_“I’ll be going to war someday”_ It sounded surreal whenever he said it. It did when they were kids, and played with sticks as if they were swords. And it did just one week ago, when they cuddled naked on top of the rug _“You’ll see, I’ll bring honor to this kingdom”_  
  
Of course he thought like that, he was a knight after all. If they weren’t wooed with honor and prestige then there was no way they would accept the calamities of war. But Viktor was born a villager, just like him. It wasn’t until his mother got pregnant from a noble that his new little sibling opened them a door to aristocracy, and he had the chance to become a knight.  
  
Knighthood seemed almost like a miracle back then, it meant prosperity and wealth, and it left his family well positioned. Yuuri could totally understand what he did, why he left the markets. But that didn’t mean he was able to ignore the downside.  
  
In a kingdom like theirs, so hidden and independent in the middle of the forest, war was nothing but a buzz, and absurd, meaningless term, flying at the back of everyone’s minds. The possibility of the king risking his small troops to gain more land they didn’t need was almost ludicrous, it wasn’t real.  
  
Until it was.  
  
Yuuri let himself rest against the trunk of a tree, giving his knees a rest and sliding all the way onto the ground. He would have liked to believe he had selected a tree at random, but he couldn’t pretend he didn’t care about that place or the memories it carried. Viktor and he spent a lot of time in that clear of the forest. Their kingdom had many short mounts and hills, but none as pretty as that one. Sometimes they stayed the entire day there, eating berries and talking about anything, lighting a bonfire and camping under the bare stars.  
  
An echo broke through the silence of the forest, and he didn’t realize he was crying until he acknowledged it as his own sob. He grabbed his head in his hands, his palms pressing onto his wet eyes and his fingers tangling onto the hair of his fringe.  
  
He knew Viktor would never leave without a goodbye, but the thought of never seeing him again was a nightmare he would never wake up from. He needed to see him, he needed to tell him something. He didn’t know what exactly, but the words were already stuck in his throat, cutting off his air, making him choke.  
  
His eyes seemed to stay determinate on messing with him, since all he saw as he looked at his surroundings was a tiny, silver-haired kid, his short and pale arms wrapped around a huge bunch of branches he could barely carry as he exclaimed: _“Come on, Yuuri! If you don’t grab anything I’m going to win again!”_  
  
Yuuri smiled at the memory, not because he wanted to, but because his face had molded to unconsciously copy that lovely heart-shaped smile of his imagination. Cleaning the snot off his nose, he remembered those afternoons they spent haunting. Back when Viktor’s father was still alive and he used to teach them how to build rabbit traps.  
  
If he tried hard enough, he could still picture a young Viktor, holding a dead hare by the ankles and smiling contently. He used to be so proud of his prays, while Yuuri could barely stare at them. He loathed hunting almost as much as he hated hunger. It was necessary, they needed the meat. But he preferred to do the process as fast and impersonal as possible, letting a distant arrow do the job and carrying the body inside a bag. But Viktor was used to it, somehow. Death didn’t bring the same goosebumps to him. And he carried the animals proudly, barehanded, like an ultimate trophy.  
  
He sighed, trying to relax his tense shoulders, but it wasn’t just his shoulders that were tense. His whole body was contracted. His neck, his back, his stomach, his limbs. And his heart, stiff and cramping in his chest. It was only then, once he let his muscles rest, once he got over the first thunderstrike of grief, that he allowed himself to feel other emotions.  
  
He was angry, fuming. Why did he have to hear the news from someone else? A messenger, of all people! He deserved to hear it from his own voice, he deserved to be looking at his lover's eyes as he heard the truth. He had the right to a hand to hold, a shoulder to cry on. But Viktor was nowhere to be seen. And he was dealing with it alone.  
  
When he heard the sound of galloping and neighing, he wasn’t really surprised. His legs had driven him to that specific spot in the forest for a reason, and it wasn’t just the beauty of its landscape or the perfection of its sunsets. No, it was way more than that.  
  
“Fancy seeing thee here, mine own lovely gentleman” The voice was so easy to recognize, even distorted by the metallic effect of the helmet “I thought I’d have to look through mountains, skies and oceans to find you. Instead, I looked through you. And mountains, skies and oceans is what I found”  
  
Normally, Yuuri would follow the lines of his flattery, even if as a joke. But right then, with anguish pressing in his chest and radiating into fury, when all he could do was dry his tears with fire, he was in no mood for their usual teasing.  
  
“Oh, so you resolved to appear, in the end”  
  
Viktor jumped off his horse’s back and took off his helmet, waving his silver fringe away from his puzzled face.  
  
“What’s wrong?” He had the audacity to ask “Yurio told me he saw you being kicked out by a guard, so I thought I’d maybe find you here and…”  
  
“What’s wrong?? What’s wrong, you say!??” Yuuri stood up, eyes sore and swollen but distinctively dry, as he pressed an accusing finger onto the cold metal of Viktor’s armor “You send a messenger to tell me there’s a war, that you are leaving me, that you are fighting one of the most powerful kingdoms out there …and then you ride all the way here to ask me what’s wrong??”  
  
“It’s not as bad as you paint it, Yuuri. Calm down, it’s just…”  
  
“Just what??” The accusing finger turned into a whole fist, as he hit his shielded chest twice “Just a battle? Just a war??”  
  
“What do you want me to do?? I’m a knight! It’s my duty, I have no choice!”  
  
“Run!” He screamed, pushing him “Run away! Don’t go!”  
  
Now it was Viktor’s turn to raise his voice, as he grabbed his fervent lover by the wrists and kept him from hitting him. His fists were bruised.  
  
“Stop it, Yuuri!” His gripped was so hard Yuuri’s hands grew numb “I can’t run away! It would be betrayal to Lord Giacometti! I wouldn’t be able to call myself a man of honor if I left!”  
  
“I don’t give a damn about your honor!” He shouted, getting loose of his hold, and staring at him with bloodshot eyes “Viktor, you are going to die!”  
  
When he heard the first sob, he took a hand to his own burning lids to try to dry the weeping away. But the tears weren’t there. As he raised his head in surprise, he found them falling down Viktor’s cheeks instead.  
  
“Viktor?”  
  
“Do you think I don’t mind??” He cried, voice wet and clinging onto the back of his bloated throat “Do you think I wouldn’t like to stay?? That I don’t want to keep waking up next to you?? That I won’t miss my house, my family, my life here??”  
  
Yuuri tried to reach out for him, but he stepped back.  
  
“Viktor, I…”  
  
“I sent a messenger because I didn’t want to have to talk with you about this, nor with anyone! I don’t want to say goodbye, because this is not a goodbye! I will come back!!” He said, and he didn’t sound like he believed in his own words “I will come back…”  
  
Within his own sorrow, his own misery, Yuuri had never stopped to consider Viktor’s feelings. And there he was, shrinking into his knight suit, his armor clinking as he quivered in fear, breath hitched and skin flushed. He had been so, so selfish, never had he considered Viktor being scared.  
  
Without thinking about it twice, he jumped the distance between them and wrapped his arms around his neck. He held him tight, molding onto his shape and burying his head on the crook of his neck. It wasn’t until he saw his tears falling onto his reflection on the armor, that he realized he was crying again.  
  
“I’m sorry” He whimpered, rubbing his cheek dry against his jaw, lips trembling as he babbled his laments “I’m so sorry”  
  
Viktor wrapped his arms around him as best as he could. The metal wouldn’t let him feel his heat, but at least he could feel the weight of his body, something to hold onto, and Yuuri was glad he could give him that. He wished he could say he was trying to console him. But, in reality, he was trying to console himself.  
  
“Don’t cry, love” Viktor took off his gloves, he needed to touch him, really touch him. Barehanded. And he rubbed his thumbs across his cheekbones “I’ll be ok, I’ll come back for you”  
  
Yuuri felt repulsed with himself. It wasn’t him who was about to give his life for his kingdom, and yet he was crying like a baby, letting the true hero support him. He couldn’t help it. No matter how much he wanted to stop, grief keep sprouting down his face against his will. He took his hands to cup his lover’s face, to dry his tears too. At least, he wanted to offer some sense of comfort.  
  
“Stay with me” He whispered, but Viktor shook his head.  
  
“I wish I could, Yuuri. But I have my prestige to defend” He insisted “I wouldn’t be able to live knowing I betrayed my honor”  
  
Yuuri couldn’t understand it, the whole honor and prestige deal. He, an artisan, who had never even tasted glory, whose body would be thrown into a common pit and not even a tombstone would remember his name. There was no way he understood.  
  
Somehow, he couldn’t help but remembering their haunting trips when they were younger. The rabbits. Viktor holding up a price he thought so esteemed, while Yuuri felt plainly disgusted.  
  
“I’ll miss you”  
  
They stood like that for a while, clinging onto each other, letting the sun set behind the hill as they tried to disappear onto the other’s hold. At some point, Viktor took off his armor, wanting to feel his lover closer, closing his eyes as they cuddled against a tree. Makkachin, his horse, obliviously grated around, maybe leaving a little too far for his owner’s liking. But the couple was too gone to even notice. As well as the sunset, which they never failed to admire; or the summer’s insistent mosquitoes they always complained about. They didn’t comment on any of those facts.  
  
“Do you remember what happened at this place?” Viktor opted to reach for the past, it was safer than the present.  
  
“Hmm” Yuuri hummed in agreement, knowing way too many things had happened at that place. But also knowing specifically which event they were talking about “We kissed for the first time”  
  
“The first of many”  
  
He didn’t know if he was attempting a conversation, or just audibly evoking a memory of comfort. Viktor could be needy as that. And Yuuri was more than sure he would evoke the memory of that very same moment in the future, and remember it when he needed it the most.  
  
He smiled, but it wasn’t quite a smile. It was just an overwhelmed pursing of his lips, an outer manifestation of the clenching of his gut.  
  
He kissed him, keeping his eyes opened the whole time, watching as the familiar pair of pale eyes stared back at him as well.  
  
The sun left the sky to leave room for the moon, and as Yuuri glanced up at it, blinded by the whiteness, he wished for it to never leave. Because once it left, once it disappeared into the morning, it would take Viktor away with it.  
  
They only had one last night, and he wanted it to last forever.  
  
They hadn’t decided to camp in there for the night, they just mindlessly assumed they would. There were no objections. They lighted a bonfire and ate some fruit, just like in the old days. Yuuri was trying to get used to that term, “the old days”. From that day on, everything they used to do together would be part of that melancholic title. Hunting, going for walks, riding Makkachin, cuddling, hugging, kissing…everything would lose its every property of present, to become a part of that far, distant thing that was the past. He didn’t want to think about that.  
  
After they ate, they threw a blanket onto the ground and they had sex under the dark night’s sky. To say Yuuri didn’t enjoy it would have been a lie. There was no point in any timeline, in any universe, in which Yuuri wouldn’t bask in the carnal feeling of making love to Viktor. There was no way of drowning the ecstasy.  
  
But it just wasn’t the same.  
  
What he felt was just an eclipse of the usual high, covered and clouded by the knowledge it might be the last time. The kisses, the moans, the caresses…they were as wholesome as always, but Yuuri was distracted by the effort of retaining them. Of burning them into his mind. He wanted to make sure that was what he remembered whenever he heard the name of Sir Viktor, Giacometti’s bravest knight. So as he thrusted into him, as he petted his hair and admired his white skin absorbing the moonlight, he couldn’t enjoy the moment for what it currently was. He thought of it as a memory, he praised it for the value it would have in the future, in the upcoming lonely nights. And it didn’t feel as real.  
  
They fell asleep right there, tangled in a ball of limbs, and Yuuri wasn’t surprised when he woke up to the sound of clinking metal, Viktor trying to put his armor on in silence.  
  
He had said it himself, he didn’t want to say goodbye.  
  
Day wasn’t fully on yet, the sky was clear, sunless and starless, still dark but glowing with the first lights of morning. He knew the troops would leave in some few hours, and Viktor should be there soon before they thought he had betrayed them for cowardice.  
  
Pretending to sleep, Yuuri waited until he heard the distinctive sound of Makkachin’s neighing, the weight of a body jumping onto the saddle, and the armor adjusting to a new sitting position. Only once he knew he was ready to leave, he stood up, wrapping the blanket around himself, and approaching the very surprised knight who stared down at him in pained silence.  
  
When he was about to say something, he took a finger to his lips, letting him know there was no need to say that word, to say goodbye if he didn't want to. But he couldn't leave without a kiss.  
  
After they pulled away, Viktor said:  
  
“Worry not, my fair gentleman. Even if it's not in this life, I'll find you in the next one. And the next one, and the one after. And I'll make you fall in love with me, all over again”  
  
As Yuuri saw him part, riding far into the density of the forest, he found himself alone in that place that was meant for two. He knew that, from that day on, it would never be the same. Because in his memory, that place wouldn't mean their first kiss anymore.  
  
But the last, instead.


	2. XVII Century

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry for this

Yuuri inhaled gently, carefully, agonizingly slow. He treated the murky, humid air as if it were the most delicate substance to be. As if it might break, as if it might shatter inside his lungs and disappear from existence. When, in reality, it wasn’t the air but the body trying to work it what was in the verge of collapse. That breeze, frail as it was, would have been enough to dismantle Yuuri’s small body, fragile as a blob of wet paper, lying on the filthy streets of the rainy city.

The rusty awning of a closed fruit’s shop was his perfect shelter for the downpour. From there, he could hear the rain dipping loudly onto the roof, flowing and falling vertically through the edges, creating a thick, translucent curtain of water that isolated him from the world. Within the last few months, it had become normal to find that kind of closed, abandoned shops. That year’s bad harvest had caused hundreds of peasants to fall in bankrupt. Including his parents, that hadn’t been able to pay the taxes.

He saw the blurs of carts and horses, wooden wheels cutting through the mud and adult legs with smart clothes and shoes jumping above the puddles. He couldn’t help but stare at his own, naked feet. Black dirt stuck between the toes and under his nails, skin rough and thick, already used to facing the streets first-hand. He didn’t really mind though. If he had a pair of shoes right then, he would sell them for a piece of bread without a second thought. His stomach had stopped growling days ago, giving up on its laments. Hunger had abandoned its characteristic feeling of heartburn and emptiness to become a chronic state of exhaustion and discomfort. A body he could barely instruct anymore, as he waited for Viktor to come back with some food.

Finally, he exhaled.

And it hurt. The air burnt as it made its way out his empty organism, as it deflated his inflamed belly, swollen from the continued job of digesting itself in the lack of something else to consume.

He had been hungry before, of course he had. In fact, his mouth had been filled with more pleas than actual food throughout his whole life. Little were the memories of steaming plates and juicy fruit. But it had only gone downhill ever since their land had been confiscated, and ever since those taxmen had taken his parents away.

“Guess what I got!” He barely noticed when Viktor appeared through the rain into their little dry space. With the torrent it was hard to barely listen to anything, but what he did catch though, was the prominent smell of bread.

He tried to sit properly, to catch a glance of his friend, but his spine trembled with the mare effort of keeping straight. He ended up leaning against a wall, blinking, taking in the miraculous image of Viktor holding a bread roll. His damp hair, silver and shoulder-length; his fair skin dirtied by mud and rests of sunburn; and his heart-shaped smile. His familiar heart-shaped smile, that was now incomplete with the absence of a canine, a tooth he had lost in a fight with a shopkeeper during one of his hunts for food. It was still uplifting to see him smile. But Yuuri would never fail to notice its missing piece.

He tried to reach out for a piece of bread, but Viktor stopped him.

“Nuh-uh!  You know the rules!” He said, smugly “I was the one who stole it, so I deserve the biggest piece”

Yuuri rolled his eyes. Viktor might have been a bit older but him, but it was quite obvious who was more mature of the two.  With only thirteen years of life, he could already tell age was just a number. And even though he couldn’t exactly remember how many years separated him from Viktor right then he knew it wasn’t enough to make a difference.

“Was it hard?” He asked, accepting the smallest half of the roll.

“Not really” Viktor sat right next to him, crossing his legs and taking a bite right away “I waited till the baker got distracted, he didn’t really see me”

Yuuri nodded, looking at the bread between his dirty hands.

“Aren’t you eating?” The question sounded concerned, and he didn’t dare to look at his friend as he answered. He didn’t want to seem ungrateful.

“I feel sick”

“Sick? Sick how? You are not hungry?”

“I don’t know” He shrugged, trying to feel something other than the overall malaise.

“How can you not know? Yuuri, you didn’t eat in days!” Viktor rationed the bread again, giving him a larger piece instead “I can give you the bigger half today, if you are not feeling well…” 

Yuuri accepted the extra crumbs and smiled at him, thankful. Yet, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to eat right then. His stomach had already contracted within itself and it felt like it had closed for good. He knew he needed it, he knew his body begged for that piece, that entire roll and even more. But he couldn’t bring himself to swallow. Not even spit could go down his throat.

Still, he tried. He cut a small piece between his fingers and stuffed it in, munching difficulty.

“Gulp that down. Please” Viktor begged him, seeing he kept shifting the food inside his mouth “I know you feel bad...but it's worse if you don't eat”

Yuuri obeyed, and the mouthful fell dry and solid onto his empty stomach, almost echoing.

There suddenly was a thumb on the corner of his lip, cleaning the crumbs away. He looked upwards to meet Viktor’s teasing smile, shining on him from above, always proud of being able to take care of him. The thing was, it was usually the other way around. It was Yuuri who sewed their torn clothes, it was him who built the best shelters, and who comforted Viktor through his nightmares. But it was ok, he didn’t mind. In return, he got something indispensable: his loving company.

“You look tired” Viktor commented, stroking his cheek, cleaning no crumbs this time.

“I am”

He sulked, seeing him sighing laboriously, rubbing his temples and his eyes with scrawny fingers.

They usually didn’t sleep if they weren’t around each other. The streets were dangerous, and they couldn’t let their guard down.

“Come here” He offered his shoulder, and in so second Yuuri was clinging onto his figure, his half of the bread roll forgotten on his lap “Try to rest a little bit, did you have a hard day?”

Yuuri proceeded to tell him about his morning, about how he spent over an hour cleaning the wheels of some man’s cart, who had promised to pay. But as soon as he had been finished it started raining right away, and the man said the work had been useless since the cart would get covered in mud anyways. He explained how he had tried to run after him, to ask for his well-deserved payment, but his legs had given out and his heart had protested inside his ribcage, telling him to slow it down.

He hated it, he hated what he had become. He hated the headaches, the dizziness, the breaths that sounded like wheezes before the minimum effort and he was tired. So, so tired. Tired of his efforts being in vain, of always being hungry and cold, and of the looks of disgust of every passerby as they saw him there, lying on the street.

“What a moron, I hope his cart gets stuck in the mud” Viktor scoffed, paying less attention to Yuuri’s fatigue than he probably should have “Like that one we saw the other day! Remember? The carter was so fat the horses refused to keep pulling!”

“Hmm” Yuuri hummed a soft giggle, drowsy, but not exactly sleepy. The sound of rainfall and the echoes of the world outside their bubble were somehow lulling, and he found himself diving deeper onto Viktor’s embrace.

Viktor seemed to notice right away, and shifted his body for him to rest more comfortably, taking a hand to his dark, humid hair and pushing back his bangs.

It was only then, with Yuuri’s ear pressed so firmly onto the other’s chest and listening to the calm, even pounding of his heart, that he realized just how slow his was beating in comparison.

He coughed on purpose, trying to put it back in march. But once he started he couldn’t stop, and he fell into a coughing fit.

Never had his lungs made that noise.

“Whoa, are you ok??” there was a pair of hands rubbing his back, patting it inexpertly, as if he were choking on something “Yuuri??”

 

“I’m fine, I’m fine” He cleared his throat “Sorry”

“Don’t be…” That same pair of hands now held him gently in place, stroking his shoulders “Are you sure you are ok, though? You didn’t catch a cold, didn’t you?”

“No, don’t worry about it, I just…”

“What if you catch lung disease? Yuuri, I heard about those things, it’s not good”

Yuuri let him touch his forehead, first with his hand and then with his lips, trying to take his temperature.

Even though, he knew his coughing was no cold. They were in summer. And he had no catarrh.

“It’s not lung disease” He insisted, grabbing Viktor’s hand in his own, looking at him in the eyes to give him reassurance “I promise, it doesn’t feel like that”

That seemed to calm him down a bit, and after a quick sigh of relief, he took their intertwined hands to his mouth, giving them a quick peck. Beyond the awning, the rain was starting to cease. The last remaining droplets were merged with the leftovers of water dropping from the pointy roofs and the branches of the trees. Far away, in the horizon, the lights of twilight could be seen through the dense clouds.

“Just in case, we should look for a better shelter tonight” Viktor said, looking forwards into nowhere. His fingertips had dug under the other’s shirt absentmindedly, and it trailed soft patters onto the skin of his back “You know, somewhere warmer, maybe we can try to go to Yuuko’s”

Yuuko was a nice young lady who sometimes let homeless kids sleep in the empty corners of her barn. But it was pretty far away, and most times it was completely crowded.

“Hmm, I don’t think we’ll find a place” Yuuri tried to protest “And we probably won’t get there before nightfall”

“If we leave now, I think we will” Viktor shook his shoulder, insistent, chuckling at the annoyed snort he got for a response “Come on, it’s worth a shot!”

The truth was, Yuuri was really bad at long walks. He got tired and lazy rather easily.

But he was also really bad at denying Viktor.

“Ok, let’s try”

Viktor cheered, helping him stand up and clean the dirt away from his clothes. But he didn’t miss the way his knees seemed to quiver as he got on his feet, nor the unfinished piece of bread falling from his lap as he stood.

They walked hand in hand, as always, their feet sinking into the puddles of mud and stagnant rainfall, slippery and dense. At first, when they had just met, they used to hold hands as not get lost and separated by the town’s crowds. That had been over a year ago, back when they both sill had houses and a family to come back to, when the financial decline had barely began. Back then, they didn’t search the streets for food. They didn’t steal. They just looked for easy jobs with easy payments, barter, polishing some shoes for a bag of seeds, some utensil, whatever they needed at home. Yuuri remembered freshly how relieved his mother had been when he befriended an older kid, she said he would be safer, and that they should always stick together.

He still kept up with that promise.

But holding Viktor’s hand had become so much more than that. It wasn’t only a seek for security, for protection. It was something else, new, that Yuuri couldn’t quite bring himself to understand. Or maybe he did comprehend, and he just didn’t want to acknowledge it.

It hadn’t always been survival for them, they did remember what a house felt like, a family. Love. They knew about love. They knew that people were drawn together by that mythical force, that they could feed from each other’s company, and that fear wasn’t the only emotion that could get a heart to speed up.  

However, life was different for them now.

They knew they would never get a house of their own. If climate kept ruining the harvests, getting a job in someone else’s field would be impossible as well. They would be homeless forever. Family-less. Love-less.

Keeping each other close, holding hands, was the closest to a home they thought they would ever get. The only stable, steady soil they could would ever step on, was the one they walked together. They never wanted to part from their only firm ground.

“Do you think Yuuko will have some leftovers to spare? I’m so hungry” Viktor complained, a loud rumble of his stomach emphasizing his words.

“To be honest, I don’t even think she’ll have room for us” Yuuri popped his bubble, as always “Why don’t you eat the bread I left?”

“Nuh-uh! That’s yours! You need to eat too, just wait till you feel better” He squeezed his hand, pulling from it for him to walk faster “Why do you have to be so pessimist though? Believe in my plans for once!”

Yuuri rolled his eyes, trying to catch up with the longer, faster steps.

“If your plans ever worked…”

“Rude!” Viktor gasped, high-pitched and dramatic “Name _one_ of my plans that backfired”

“Stealing that farmer’s pig”

“Ok, in my defense, I didn’t know they were so heavy”

They both laughed, truthfully.

During their first few months on the streets, each time they laughed felt like the answer to a bad joke, a compromise with their soul to keep themselves alive. But as time went by, and as they molded to their new imposed lifestyles, it started to sound real. Maybe surreal. But real nonetheless.

“Let’s hurry up, Yuuri. Night’s starting to fall”

Everything around them was wet and dense. The bogged soil, their sweaty foreheads; even the wind, so humid and heavy with moisture it was hard to breathe. It felt heavy, almost crushing, against Yuuri’s feeble bones. It was getting harder to unstick his feet from the gluey mud, and work such a thick air through his tired lungs.

He didn’t know how long he would be able to keep going. He had fainted thrice on that same week, and he could see a fourth about to kick in at any moment. It was easy to tell by then. When the black dots started buzzing and flying in his vision, then it was time to sit down for a while.

But he didn’t want to tell Viktor, he didn’t want to bother him with his complaints.

“Come on, hurry!! It will be all crowded if we don’t move faster!”

He wasn’t sure what was what finally buckled him.

Maybe it was his legs, bony and weak and unable to carry his weight anymore. Maybe his lungs couldn’t keep up with his ragged breath, or his heart had failed to settle a proper rhythm. Or maybe, it had been all and more combined. His body putting up a strike, a protest, a denial to keep going under those conditions.

But for whatever reason, his weary, slow steps fell into stillness. And before he could register the effects of gravity, the sky was rolling forwards into the horizon and he was falling on his knees.

“Yuuri?? Yuuri!! What’s wrong!?” In no second, Viktor was running towards his side, peeling him off the sticky mud and holding him between his arms “Yuuri??”

He closed his eyes, trying to get the world to stop spinning. But even the lights behind his lids would dance and dizzy him, making him shake.

“I don't feel well” was all he got to say, the only words he could find at the crippling fear of having lost his mobility “I don't...I don't know what's…”

“Eat! Eat, please! You can have the whole roll, I don't care! I'll steal some more...but please...please, eat!”

It wasn't until that moment, until he heard the desperation in Viktor's voice, until he opened his eyes and waited for his vision to focus and he saw that look of utter shock and despair on his face, that he considered that remote, far-off option.

It wasn’t until he remembered how Viktor’s parents died, that he realized he might have been starving.

Bread was pressed onto his lips but he closed his mouth and shook his head, tears of frustration pooling in his eyes as he looked up at his friend. He couldn't eat.

Viktor hugged him close, letting him rest between his arms, the support being much more comfortable than the floor underneath, and Yuuri clung onto the heat.

“Yuuri, what are you feeling?? What can I do for you?? Do you need any water??”

No, he had stopped feeling thirsty a long time ago. He tried to remember when it had been the last time he had drank some water. He couldn't.

“I’m cold” He shivered, and Viktor's arms grew tighter around him but he could barely feel it.

“I can give you my shirt” He tried, pulling from his clothes. But Yuuri stopped him.

With a sob repressed behind his pursed lips, he shook his head again.

“Don’t do this to me…let me help you, dammit!!” He didn't know when Viktor started crying, but next thing he noticed, he was being rocked back and forth, with a hand trying to rub heat onto his back “Tell me, please tell me what to do!!”

Yuuri tried to answer, he truthfully did. But as he filled his lungs with the air he needed to talk, all he heard was a high, acute wheeze. A sudden weight was pressed onto his ribcage, jumping onto his chest, straddling him. But as he took a hand to desperately reach for his contracting gut, he found nothing. Nothing choking him, nothing pressing onto his trunk. Only emptiness and air he couldn’t breathe, that he frantically tried to suck into his throat but it just wouldn’t blow in.  

“Help!!” He could hear Viktor screaming, but it wasn’t meant to him. He was begging to every random passerby, dozens of deaf ears that wouldn’t listen, that seemed immune to the laments of a despairing, young kid “Help me, please! His pulse is really slow!!”

His head had fallen to rest on the other’s legs, and as he swallowed useless air like a fish out of water, all he could see was the starless sky of the murky night and some silver locks of hair blowing with the summer’s breeze. Everything was framed by a white smudge of blur in the edges, that kept getting thicker and thicker and left less and less to see.

“Sir, please listen to me! Miss! Please!! He is dying!!”

Before his impotence to speak, his lost words twirled within some gasp in his heaving chest, he took a deaden hand to rest on Viktor’s cheekbone. He caressed him as best as he could, his fingers trembling, his arm threatening to give up on him. But it was enough to get what he wanted, and that was Viktor’s stare on him.

He didn’t know if the face he saw right then, that familiar face, the blue eyes, the missing tooth…he didn’t know if it was real, or just a projection of his pious memory. It was too vivid, too clear and too pure compared to the crumbling image of the world around it, and he suspected of its authenticity as he saw the pink flush on his cheeks, his plumper face, his hair short and neat and shiny, clean. Oh, so spotless, so perfect. Just like it used to be.

In a race with nature, he tried to outrun the numbing tickles growing up his body before they got to his face, and he outlined a warm, kind smile.

“Yuuri…”

A shaky pair of lips pressed a kiss onto his forehead, and that’s the last sprout of heat he felt before his body grew senseless.

The final thing he saw, before his eyes rolled onto the back of his head, was a forced smile on Viktor’s mouth, too. A heart-shaped one, as always. Bright and wholesome and devastated, broken, as he turned to kiss the palm of his inert hand.

Yuuri closed his lids and took that painful image with him, the one of Viktor gulping down his grief and grinning at him, just to gift him some proper last memory.

The heart of his smile, wasn’t the only one incomplete.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise next one won't be so tragic (kind of)...anyone up for some victorian victuuri?? 
> 
> Please, if you have the time, leave your thoughts in the comments! It helps me improve my writing! (and it makes me happy :D)


	3. XIX Century

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hellooo! Don't hate me :D I know it took me forever to update :D :D :D

“And horse riding, of course I enjoy horse riding. But I only ride white horses, logically. The purest of breeds. You should see my mare, oh you would adore her, her lineage is exquisite. And her mane, oh, her silver mane! Reminds me of your hair, actually”  
  
A lock of said silver hair escaped the restrains of its hairdo, insolently falling over Viktor’s left eye. He tried to tuck it back behind his ear, but it just wouldn’t stay in place. Not that he really cared, to be honest, he despised that hairstyle. It made his forehead look huge. His efforts for keeping it neat and on point were nothing but a desperate source of entertainment, a mere distraction, as he heard that lady talk.  
  
“I always ride my adored mare in the vast hectares of my father’s fields. Did I mention we own a huge portion of land, good sir? Oh if you only saw the elms…the flowers! Only purple flowers, obviously, the most gorgeous there to be!”  
  
She was a flesh and bone doll, skin fair and spotless, whitened by the finest of powders all the way from her forehead to her prominent chest. Her eyes were green and shadowed in lilac. Her cheeks, theatrically flushed pink. Her lips were painted burgundy, darker on the inner side, and lipstick made them look heart-shaped. Which, to be honest, must have been the only thing they had in common.  
  
She barely modulated as she spoke. Her posture was as clean and solid as one of his garden’s statues. And about as dead, too. If it wasn’t for the sound of her high-pitched voice and her milky, flowery smell, Viktor would have sworn she was made of massif marble. It was possibly the dress what caused the effect. Not the thousand layers of puffy, endless cloth tangled around her legs, but the way too tight corset, which he was pretty sure she couldn’t even breathe in.  
  
“And I also used to have a male stallion, which I adored profoundly! But I sold him to compete at the races…I miss him like crazy right now!”  
  
“And why did you give him away, if you were so fond of it?”  
  
“Oh, you see, he got sick and the weather in our fields gets cold. They recommended me he should move out to warmer lands, I did it for his health. You know; if you love him, let him go!”  
  
He found that little chestnut phrase a little stupid, but he didn’t comment on it.  
  
“I see” He sighed, shifting on his seat uncomfortably, feeling like the entire mansion was just too small for two “I see you have a book over there, what is it about?”  
  
“Oh, this?” She chuckled awkwardly, showing off the cover “It’s just a knitting manual”  
  
Viktor let his body fall onto the backrest, exhausted, even though he hadn’t moved from there in the last two hours. It wasn’t her fault, he thought. That’s how women acted, how they were told to act. People from his social environment were always the same.  
  
Perhaps that was why the doors and arches of the mansion were so large: so that all those pompous, thick dresses could pass through. Also the huge, shiny windows, ready to show everyone their so needed reflections, and the tall roofs for the even taller egos. Rooms so huge and so full of ornaments and sculptures and chandeliers with their hundred hanging diamonds, only to be inhabited but not so bright and sparkly people. There were thrice as servants as they were holders; a cook and a maid and a butler and a gardener, while the owners of the house grew spider webs. And the silver, oh so much silver. On the cutlery, the lamps, the engravings of the table, on the legs of every piece of furniture and the frames of pictures and mirrors. His mother said it looked shiny and elegant, that it spoke of their wealth and God’s sympathy towards them.  
  
For Viktor, it was just cold.  
  
“Excuse me, are you done with your tea and biscuits, madam?”  
  
The voice of the butler was a mouthful of fresh air, some short break from the stuffed atmosphere of awkward chatter and the smell of earl grey tea.  
  
“Yes, we are. You may clear the table” She didn’t bother to hand him the tray, and the man had to walk all the way behind the couch onto the other side of the table to grab it without interjecting the conversation “As I was saying, my stallion is a champion. She…”  
  
The butler dropped a spoon, and she did a short pause in her speech to eye him with annoyance at the interruption.  
  
Viktor couldn’t help but stare at him, ducking awkwardly to find the small piece of cutlery between the thousand layers of the lady’s thick dress. He looked like he was in trouble. He kept glancing up at her ineptly, opening his mouth to tell her but closing it right away, afraid of cutting off the talk. In one moment she changed positions and crossed one leg over the other, making the dress lift for a fragment of second and the spoon to become visible within the sea of purple cloth. The snort that escaped Viktor’s mouth as he saw him trying to grab it slyly and failing miserably was totally unintentional. But it was loud, obvious, and it got him quite a questioning look from the lady, who didn’t understand she was making an easy task seem impossible for the poor servant.  
  
“Adelia, darling! Your carriage is just outside the porch!”  
  
A middle-aged woman, with a dress about as flamboyant and posture as firm as a broomstick’s, announced the end of Viktor’s weekly shift of torture.  
  
“Is it five o’clock already?” Adelia gasped, taking one last suspicious look to the butler, who was now standing and cleaning a spoon satisfactorily “Oh, time flies!”  
  
“Thanks for the announcement, mother” Viktor smiled at her. But it wasn’t a gesture of politeness, just the innate outline of relief before his imminent freedom.  
  
“Did you two have a good time?”  
  
“Of course we did” He took Adelia’s hand in his and left a quick peck on the back.  
  
Just like he did with the last twelve ladies that visited his house that year.  
  
Of course she didn’t know that, though, and of course it just pumped up her ego.  
  
“Oh, Viktor!” She giggled hiding her laugh with her hand “You are stunning!”  
  
Someone cleared his throat behind them.  
  
“Would you want me to walk her towards the door, sir?” The butler asked. As if the door wasn’t only some meters away from them, and as if there was a chance she was stupid enough to get lost in the hall. He was just doing his job.  
  
“Oh, no, thank you. I’ll do it myself” Viktor answered, seductively, grabbing Adelia by the arm and guiding her flustered character outside the mansion.  
  
His mother nodded elegantly and left the room in disillusion, already knowing her son too well, and being quick and smart to recognize yet another rejection.  
  
“I would have some serious talk with your butler, if I were you” Adelia whispered to him, yet loud enough for the other man to hear as Viktor opened the door for her “I think he’s sort of perverse, you see, getting between my legs like that”  
  
“Totally unacceptable” He clicked his tongue, nodding understandingly “I’ll make sure to put him on his place”  
  
She hummed pleasantly, reluctantly letting go of his arm to get into her carriage.  
  
Once the lady was inside the vehicle, her gloved hand waving at him through the window as she disappeared behind the gate, Viktor turned around and entered his house with a sigh, letting the cramped muscles of his cheeks rest from the gentle, polite efforts of his smile.  
  
“Sir?”  
  
The voice of the butler made him raise his head again, and he found himself standing still and calm in the middle of the empty hall. For the first time in hours, silent.  
  
“With you I need to talk” He said, tone serious and severe, walking forwards and towards the servant “What do you think you were doing, getting in between the madam’s legs?”  
  
“Oh, forgive my imprudence, sir”  
  
“Sorry is not enough this time, poor Miss Orland’s not pleased…and neither am I”  
  
“Did I misbehave?”  
  
“If you misbehaved, you ask?” Viktor leaned forwards, gaze accusing and offended as he stared down at the other man “Of course you did misbehave”  
  
“Was I naughty, sir?”  
  
His brow, purposely furrowed and angered, gave up to the effects of the other’s tilting smile.  
  
“Naughty?” He said, grabbing his face between his hands “The naughtiest of all”  
  
And, before he could elaborate his arguments, he pulled him in for an eager, fierce kiss.  
  
Breaths were ragged and fingers curious, getting between the thousand crannies of their fancy clothes. They had learnt to ignore the eyes of the many pictures hanging on the walls, including the portrait of Viktor’s mother, which looked like it constantly disapproved of what it saw. As long as they weren’t real eyes and prejudices, they had nothing to worry about. And they didn’t have to stop.  
  
They chortled, giggling onto the other’s lips as they heard the sound of their kissing echoing through the tall walls of the living room. Having that moment, that sole minute of intimacy, felt like the ultimate reward for Viktor’s every effort. All those hours of sugarless tea and chatter, of forced smiles and courtesy. They didn’t matter, if that meant he could have this.  
  
Regardless how many had gotten in and out of that mansion, only one single person had ever got into his heart. And they had locked themselves in, since then.  
  
“Bloody hell, I’ve been waiting all the afternoon” He said, muffled by the constant pecks and chuckles, pouring his gaze onto the servant’s big, brown eyes “I thought she would never leave!”  
  
“You tell me? I was starting to get jealous over here” He felt the weight of a thumb falling onto his lower lip, his chin, his jaw “With all those compliments and heavy glances…”  
  
Viktor breathed and inhaled him. He inhaled his scent, his sweat, his breath. Right then, he needed nothing else.  
  
“And what about you? Getting between her legs like you had business over there…” He teased, smirking deviously.  
  
“There was a spoon!”  
  
They kissed again.  
  
This time, Viktor gave into submission. He put nor barriers nor objections to the hands grabbing him by the collar of his shirt, pulling him closer, merging their mouths together as if they could melt onto the other. Every muscle in his body, his legs, his shoulders, his brow, they all fell prey of bliss and drained out their tension in a dreamy sigh. The butler kissed him like there was no tomorrow, no today, no ever. And he was nothing but the pulp of a man within his arms, way too pleased with his own destruction.  
  
They only stopped as they heard the noise of wood creaking over their heads, some heavy shoes walking on the first floor; but it disappeared behind the sound of a closing door. They had some more time.  
  
“Yuuri Katsuki, you are going to be the end of me” He said, eyes coming back from their paranoid visit to the stairs, falling back into their comfort zone.  
  
Yuuri laughed, pushing him forwards until he hit some piece of furniture, pecking his lips one last time before he derailed onto his neck.  
  
“The end? But this is just the beginning…”  
  
Viktor felt the metal of the table’s edge pressing onto his back, the cold surface of the silver running chills up his spine.  
  
Yes, silver was cold. But Yuuri was warm. Yuuri knew how to fold towels to look like swans. He had the recipe for the perfect mint tea to cure colds, and lemon for the stomachaches. He always cut the crust out of the bread, because he knew Viktor didn’t like it. And he was kind to everyone. To the maids, to the cook, to sellers at the markets; his smile and his politeness had no restrictions. He did everything with stainless love.  
  
How had the heir of the legendary Nikiforov fortune fallen for no one but his butler, a young man who worked day and night to sustain his ordinary humble family, would be beyond anyone’s comprehension. But Viktor woke up every morning wondering the exact opposite.  
  
How did he get such a sweet, honest person to feel something for him? How did he get him to fall in love with yet another lifeless, ornamented piece of ridiculous furniture for that ridiculous mansion?  
  
At the beginning he thought he only did it for the money. When Viktor first started to realize the effect the other man had on him, he panicked, and he thought the only possible approach would be through his pocket. He started to pay him for little, extra favors. For further touches as he helped him get dressed in the mornings, for roaming hands and flashes of skin. He felt terrible, but Yuuri didn’t seem to be upset about it. He just accepted his pay and said nothing, and he assumed he must have really needed the money.  
  
But one night, after a long, heated kiss on his bed, with their bodies pressed closed onto each other and their skins flushed, Yuuri didn’t accept the coins. He just put them back on Viktor’s palm and made him close his fist around it, sealing the unspoken pact with a flustered peck on the lips.  
  
“I love you” He heard him say, and it was literal music to his ears, full orchestras and choirs, perfect, inhuman.  
  
“I love you, too” From his own lips it wasn't as magical “Please come to my room tonight, I miss sleeping with you”  
  
He stroked his cheek, and Yuuri turned his face to kiss his palm.  
  
“I’d like that. But what if she notices?”  
  
“She won't, don't worry. We'll wait until she falls asleep”  
  
Again, they hugged each other in a desperate grab of heat, a sample they could carry of each other once the time came for them to let go, for them to pretend they were just a butler and his master.  
  
“Viktor, son!” Said moment came walking down the stairs with creaky steps, and the lovers immediately parted and faked indifference “Viktor!”  
  
“What is it, mother?”  
  
The woman got into the room mindlessly, oblivious to the interruption, to the atmosphere she had just shattered.  
  
“The cook is asking me what you want for dinner tonight”  
  
She still looked a bit upset. Viktor knew she hated each time he rejected a lady, it was a disillusion for her. He thought he would have to invent a better excuse for his prolonged singleness, eventually. Or maybe, just maybe, tell her the truth.  
  
But he had been kicking that responsibility forwards in time for years, and he continued to crush the hopes of every woman who came to visit.  
  
“Oh, tell Takeshi I'll eat whatever he prepares”  
  
“Ok” She turned to leave, gaze down and unimpressed, when suddenly her eyes went back to her son in shock. She looked at him, perplexed, puzzled, and finally relieved “I'm going to write a letter” she said happily “See you at the dinner table”  
  
“See you, mother”  
  
As she left, Viktor and Yuuri stared at each other, confused, not really aware of what had changed her mood. Yet, they didn't complain. They had just got the room for themselves again.

Later that evening, the whole ground floor smelt like chicken and rosemary. Viktor walked downstairs after a warm relaxing bath, which helped him clean the stress and the tedium of Adelia Orland’s voice out from his worn mind. He grinned, loving the scent of Takeshi’s cooking in the air, and the familiar sight of Yuuri and Yuuko setting the table together. His mother and he always ate on at the dining room’s main table, wooden and way too long for just two people, under the watch of quite a creepy portrait of Viktor’s father at one of the side’s walls. Why his parents insisted in those disturbing paintings, it was beyond his understanding. Sometimes, his mother would even drop unsettling comments like “don’t play with your food, he’s watching you” or “not in front of your father”. It made it sound as if he were dead, and it made Viktor really uncomfortable.  
  
His father was a man of commerce, devoted to his finances to the point his business traveling had become a life-style and his house and family just an occasional business trip. He said he had another home overseas, where most of his investors were, and he usually sent letters trying to convince Viktor of paying him a visit. He never did.  
  
Yet, as Yuuko served them their meal on the usual silver crockery, the man’s eyes were still heavy and observant as they took every bite.  
  
“I’m very glad you enjoyed Miss Orland’s company today” After some minutes of eating in silence, his mother finally spoke “She comes from a perfect family, you know? I’m elated”  
  
“Uh, yeah” Viktor shrugged it off, not really paying much attention to the conversation as he ate.  
  
“We should invite her again, before she moves back to her hometown. She came from really far away just to meet you, almost a whole week of traveling! It would be such a shame if we lost touch”  
  
“A shame, indeed”  
  
“Aren’t you excited? This is such a good opportunity!”  
  
To be honest, Viktor didn’t quite understand what made this girl so different from all the other rich suiters that had sat with him an entire afternoon and their names hadn’t been heard within the mansion’s walls ever since. Adelia wasn’t the worst he had met, but she certainly wasn’t the best, either.  
  
“I guess? Why the commotion, though?”  
  
“Are you serious, Viktor? This is your chance to finally get married!”  
  
He coughed into his glass, almost spitting his drink, and looking back at his father’s portrait apologetically.  
  
“Excuse me?”  
  
“This is the first time you actually show interest for one of the suitors! I wrote the Orland family a letter thanking them and inviting them to have dinner with us on Saturday!”  
  
“You did what??” Viktor hit the table, and every piece of crockery did a little jump on the wood “I never said I liked her, mother!”  
  
“You sure?”  
  
He opened his mouth to argue, unable to catch neither the impishness in her voice nor the knowing smirk on her lips.  
  
Until he saw her pointing at the side of her bare neck, and his hand jumped to cover the bright red love-bite he knew was marking his own skin.  
  
“It’s not what you are thinking” He stuttered, pink spreading up to his face as he clawed onto the treacherous skin of his throat “Please, let me explain, I…”  
  
“Why are you so ashamed of love, Viktor? Were all this years of rejecting ladies just shyness? I didn’t know you could be so timid!”  
  
“Mother, I don’t like Adelia”  
  
“Nonsense!” She snorted “Why would you let her kiss you if you didn’t? It’s the first time you get so involved with someone! You can’t let this opportunity slip! You just need to…”  
  
“I didn’t kiss her, hell!”  
  
The hum of silence flooded the room to exhaustion, with the only exception of Viktor’s ragged breath cutting though its dense flow. Only then, once he heard the clicking of bouncing cutlery, he realized he had stood up and hit the table again. His face was burning, his hands were sweating cold, both his mother’s and his father’s eyes were digging holes onto the bruise of his neck, and the truth bubbled in his mouth like rabies.  
  
“If you didn’t kiss her, then who…”  
  
“I’m in love with someone else, mother” He said, gaze hid within the floorboards “For years now, I’ve been having an affair”  
  
The color of her face turned as white as a sheet underneath the rosy smears of make-up. She looked up at him, her breath audible, her eyes sharp.  
  
“With who?”  
  
He sat down again, legs shaking and unable to keep him standing. Heaves of remorse and memories of his lover made his stomach upset as he tried to formulate his name. And as he finally said it, it felt more like a prayer than a confession.  
  
“Yuuri” He whispered, injecting his stare into his mother’s in a sprout of courage “I’m in love with Yuuri Katsuki”  
  
Her expression remained sterile, frozen, inert of any kind of reaction or response. Never had Viktor seen her mother in rage, never had he seen her break her perfect composure, and that case was no exception. Every emotion, every wave of fervent rage sprouted onto surface in the brutal smash of crystal, her glass dropping to the ground and shattering in millions of pieces.  
  
“Mother!”  
  
“The butler…” She gasped, her hand still shaped around a glass that wasn’t there “The bloody butler…”  
  
“I know you must be shocked, I know he’s a man, and that he’s not as wealthy as the girls you bring me but…you know him! He’s a good person, and he’s hard-working and smart, and he could have…”  
  
“He’s a servant, Viktor!”  
  
The sudden raise of her voice caught him off guard, and got his speech to get stuck in his throat. Every night, every single minute of calm he had, he had spent it thinking of what he would say in that situation. What he would say in the case she found out, how he would put into words that visceral, demolishing love that was crumbling his insides and he had been dealing with in silence. He had thought it all. But as he looked at her in the eye, as he saw that face of sheer disappointment as bitterness, he couldn’t bring himself to speak.  
  
“No one needs to find out…” He attempted, a low blow for his undying love “Our name will not be dirtied, we just have to…”  
  
“Why?? Why do you do this to me??”  
  
Viktor ducked his head, unsure of what to say on his defense.  
  
“I’m being selfish, I know. I know I’m your only son and I know what my duty is. But I can’t do it. I’m sorry”  
  
He could see her hands trembling, her nails clawing onto the skin of her palm and her knuckles turning white. Her wrinkled lips tried to shape an insult, another objection, but they gave up at the first syllable. And just when she took a deep mouthful of air and prepared herself to talk, the door to the kitchen was slowly opened, and both of them turned to the sound.  
  
“Excuse the interruption, enjoy your meal”  
  
Viktor’s gulping echoed through the room as he saw Yuuri walking towards the table with a broom and a shovel, oblivious, so oblivious to everything, getting way too close to his mother for his own good. The poor man must have heard the sound of breaking glass and he had rushed in to help, as kind and careful as always. He seemed to notice the tautness in the air, judging by the way he kept slyly staring at their pursed mouths and the food, untouched and cooling on their plates. But he said nothing, and he continued with his work in silence.  
  
He kneeled next to the chair, grabbing the biggest pieces cautiously with his hand, and just when he was about to finish and Viktor thought he would get away with it and leave him out of that awful conversation, his mother spoke.  
  
“Yuuri, what did you do this afternoon?” She asked, but it was her son who was fast to respond.  
  
“Don’t do this, don’t get him involved” He tried, fingers clenching around the cloth of his napkin “Stop”  
  
“Yuuri, darling, answer me”  
  
The softness of her words, was in no way matching with the tension in the air, in her voice, in the muscles of her face.  
  
“Uhm, I…I served tea to master Viktor and Miss Orland, madam” He answered, eyes unsure, torn between his boss’ expression and the mess on the floor.  
  
“And after that?”  
  
“I gave the gardener the instructions you indicated me, madam”  
  
“I know, but that wasn’t until seven in the afternoon! What did you do in the meantime?”  
  
Yuuri threw a short glance at Viktor, who was biting on his nails, and he decided to acknowledge his feeling of throbbing threat.  
  
Yet, he didn’t know what was the threat all about. And, of course, assumptions made him fear for his job.  
  
“I spent some free time with Miss Yuuko, madam. I sometimes have spare minutes between chores and I thought you wouldn’t mind if I…if I talked with…I promise I wasn’t avoiding any task! I was just…”  
  
“Oh, with Yuuko, you say?”  
  
Yuuri nodded fretfully, standing up with his hands full of glass fragments, eyeing the door unnervingly.  
  
“Uhm, yeah. If you excuse me, madam, I need to throw this glass away into the…”  
  
“You stay right here!”  
  
As soon as he turned to leave, the woman grabbed him vehemently by the arm and forced him to turn around, making him drop the pieces and wound his hand in the process.  
  
“Ouch!” He yelped, gripping his own wrist and watching it bleed.  
  
“You dare lie to me!? What do I even pay you for? Molesting my son and then lying?”  
  
Yuuri dropped to his knees again, seemingly dizzied by the sight of his own blood, eyes getting glassy with shock as a mere reaction to aggression.  
  
“You corrupted my son” The seriousness in her voice, the highness, made it all so much hostile. She wasn’t acting on instinct, she was grave, aware of what she was saying, never breaking the boundaries of her intimidating poise “You betrayed my trust, and you ruined this family”  
  
“Mother, stop! He’s hurt!” Viktor jumped to his aid, trying to clean the blood with his own napkin and rubbing his back in comfort “Yuuri, are you ok?”  
  
“That’s enough! Viktor, you and I need to have some serious talk!” She stomped, seemingly intimidated by the display of affection “And you…” She turned to the butler, who was still trying to cut off the hemorrhage “consider yourself fired”  
  
For the first time through the whole display, Yuuri looked genuinely upset. His eyes shot open in despair, his jaw dropped and trembled in meaningless babbles he couldn’t even voice, and his bleeding hand was long forgotten as he had a new, deeper wound to mourn for.  
  
“B-but…madam!” he stuttered, voice breathy and seismic as he tried to get himself together. But it was impossible, Viktor could tell. Right then, he looked as shattered as the glass spread on the floor “I…I have a family, madam…my parents are…”  
  
“You should have thought about that before, shouldn’t you?”  
  
“You can’t do that! Mother, you are not like this! I beg you!”  
  
“I’m doing this for your own good, Viktor! I love you, I don’t want you to throw your life to the trash!” She exclaimed, her eyes getting watery for once “I can’t have him living in the same house as you, now that I know the truth”  
  
Viktor tightened his hold around Yuuri, gripping onto him, remembering Adelia and her stallion and the cold. If you love him, let him go…  
  
“Then I’ll be the one leaving” He said, earning two shocked looks for an answer “Mother, if you promise me to keep him safe and employed…I’ll move out this same summer, and I’ll marry Adelia Orland”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> heyyy! I'm sorry for being a bitch! This one's not as tragic as the others...and I actually love this AU a lot...maybe way too much....  
> which basically means I kind of had an idea for a FULL MULTI CHAPTER FIC about this story, about victorian victuuri. It would be about how they met, and what happens after this, after he marries Adelia. Would you like me to write that? or would it be too much? Maybe once I finish this one


	4. XX Century

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry for this one...  
> ALSO, WARNING!!! Idk if this may be triggering or offending for my queer pals, so I warn you: this has harsh mentions of homophobia.  
> I know, I prefer this fandom to stay out of that kind of hate too. But this fic it's about history and how crude and cruel it was and I think discrimiation in the XX century is a topic I can't ignore.  
> So I hope you don't mind...

Yuuri remembered as clear as day the first time he had heard that noise.  
  
“Just pretend they are fireworks” His mother had told him, holding his hand and smiling reassuringly, as if he hadn’t heard her gasp in horror just one minute ago “Don’t mind them, and they’ll eventually go away”  
  
They hadn’t gone away.  
  
He could still hear them, almost every day. He could still catch that faint, whistling sound; he could still see the flashes of light entering through the window. And, if he closed his eyes, he could see the impacts too. The turning heads, the widening eyes, the mouths agape in screams they had no time to voice. The explosions. The echoes of distant tragedies resounding through town, shaking the ground and shaking pulses, constant reminders of just how fragile they were. Fragile houses, fragile bodies, fragile souls. All living in a so fragile world. Listening. Hearing it crumble.  
  
Just pretend they are fireworks, his mother had said. But it was hard to pretend they were fireworks, when he had never actually seen fireworks in his entire life. And especially, since his mother wasn’t there to convince him anymore.  
  
For weeks now, it had been just him. Him and Viktor. War had pushed way too many people away from town. Whenever he got to greet a familiar neighbor, it brought him a sense of joy he never thought a distant nod of heads could bring. Greetings had stopped feeling like hellos long ago, but more like the relief of seeing the other safe and sound. It was hard to know, ever since their city had become a target. Tragedy was random, and so were its victims. Naturalizing death had become a common virus within his hometown, and he knew he had become infected the first time he heard a bomb and thought “thanks god it wasn’t me”.  
  
During the day, it was almost easy.  
  
His family’s groceries store was one of the last one standing, and the many customers managed to keep him distracted. Mainly by complaining about the prices. Routine could be comforting, and Viktor’s presence in the house as he got back from work was helpful. Having another voice, other footsteps to listen to as he walked through the hallways, it was oddly uplifting.  
  
But during the nights, however, there was no possible consolation.  
  
The permanent bags under his eyes were more than enough proof. He was a young man, barely nineteen by then, but the permanent shade of exhaustion was already printed on his face. He had never thought he was the only one going through the same compulsory insomnia, but seeing Viktor’s drained expression every morning as he sipped his coffee was a sufficient confirmation. None of them slept a blink.  
  
He couldn’t help but think that Viktor had it worse, though. At least, Yuuri knew his own family was safe somewhere. Far and across the ocean, but safe nevertheless. His roommate had a whole different story behind, his loved-ones were still in that damn country, still under the threat of bombs and imminent assaults, and still in danger.  
  
As he got home that evening and saw him staring into nowhere, stirring the pot absentmindedly as he made dinner, he considered asking him what he was thinking, if he was alright. But he immediately shook the idea away from his system. Not because he didn’t want to disturb him, but because he didn’t want to disturb himself.  
  
He had known Viktor for more than two years then, and they had always gotten along just fine. When he first moved into his house Yuuri found it a bit weird, he was shy and awkward, and unused to have a stranger sleeping in the room next door. But it didn’t take long for him to get used to it, Viktor was easy to live with. He was cheerful and easy going, his mood lighted up the whole house. Even though he didn’t know how to do any housework once he got there, he let Hiroko teach him how to cook and he learnt wonderfully. Since he stayed all day inside, sometimes the Katsukis came back after a long day of work to a cleaner house and the smell of stew, and Yuuri couldn’t be more thankful.  
  
He adored him. He adored his laugh, his heart-shaped smile, his anecdotes from when he used to work at that toothpaste factory, his weird habits and traits, and his company. At some point, they had become good friends. His father had bought a radio to listen to the news and keep the family updated with the country’s disputes. But when he wasn’t around, Viktor liked to play music on it, and they would listen to it for hours.  
  
They mostly spent nighttime together, though. During those nights when the city was a mess, when they were soldiers in the streets and screams and shooting, the kitchen table and two cups of tea were way more comforting than their own beds. One of them would knock on the other’s door, making sure they were awake, and they would spend the sleepless night together. In some occasions, they had stayed awake talking till the sunrise. They chatted about everything and anything. Their families, friends, work. The war.  
  
Somehow, every conversation ended up there.  
  
But talking about it with Viktor was different. He was full of hope, full of good thoughts for the future, and it made Yuuri felt unmeasurably comforted. Viktor’s grin, his soothing words, although sometimes fake or forced, were the only courage he could lean onto. Especially ever since his family moved out. They had become each other’s greatest support, and they had an unspoken pact of mutual comfort sealed between them.  
  
And yet, as he walked into the kitchen that night, and saw him staring at the stew as if he had just chopped his heart and threw it in there to boil by mistake, he didn’t say a thing.  
  
He couldn’t. Not after what had happened some nights before.  
  
They hadn’t properly talked since Saturday. He was scared, terrified, of the thoughts that had been swimming through his mind ever since. Viktor was cursed with his condition, that sinful condition that had taken him away from his home and the hearts of so many friends. A condition, Yuuri hadn’t really heard or thought about until he met him.  
  
“He’s a homosexual” his father had said, all in the same breath, the night before they brought him home.  
  
The way he pronounced the word, the cringe, the pity, it made Yuuri wary. Viktor was the son of one of his father’s closest friends, and when the Katsukis heard about the situation, of course they were the first to lend a hand. They didn’t know for how long they would have to hide him, how long it would take the authorities to realize the folly they were committing.  
  
“He has an arrest warrant, they are looking for him”  
  
When he heard the explanation, he did find it a bit weird. The thought of a man being with another man sounded a bit odd to him. But even more weird it was to think people were going to jail for it. Yuuri himself had never really thought about romance, about attraction, about sex. It all sounded so distant and foggy as a child, and he didn’t seem to have grown out of his apathy. He just needed to wait until it happened, he told himself. With the war, and inflation and everything, it was hard to get one’s mind to think about love.  
  
But after that rainy Saturday afternoon the previous week, when they had found some of his father’s hidden beer, and they had drunk and laughed and goofed around and Viktor had kissed him…he couldn’t really think about anything else.  
  
“You are early today” Viktor received him with dinner, as always, but his eyes were unusually distant “Did you have an easy day?”  
  
“I guess”  
  
A part of him wanted to be as talkative and open with him as he had always been, but his throat felt bloated with shame and the words got clogged in. Every time he looked at him, every time their eyes met as they ate, Yuuri’s stomach would purse a little more within itself.  
  
The conversation died out immediately. Just like it had happened the day before, and the previous one, and the one before that one. He wasn’t sure of what Viktor was thinking, but he must have been kind of offended, considering Yuuri avoided him like he had the plague. Did he? Did he have a plague? Was it reasonable that Yuuri hold his breath each time he walked past him in a hallway? Was it logical to stay out from his room? Was it just paranoia to avoid using the same towels, cups or spoons? He knew he was being delirious, he knew avoiding Viktor and his scent and his spit and the air he breathed wouldn’t help him avoid the unease he had planted in him, the doubt. He felt dirty in ways no shower could clean and what’s more, the sight of his naked flesh as he bathed only made it worse. He felt uncomfortable in his own skin.  
  
He wasn’t sure how long they would have to live like that. Yuuri had stayed in the country to keep Viktor hidden until the Nikiforovs gathered enough money to escape as well. But two days after his family parted, the authorities closed the access to the harbor until new notice. And that new notice had yet to come.  
  
In the meantime, he had to tolerate that routine. The fear, the constant danger, the radio spitting more and more ciphers of people falling dead, and the looming possibility they might be the next.  
  
All of that, without the support of his best friend.  
  
After he was done eating, plate so clean he could see his mournful reflection, he looked up to meet Viktor’s eyes. He didn’t want that distance between them, he missed having someone to talk to, someone to hold onto as the world continued to crumble around him. But that need of proximity was only a confirmation for what he feared the most, and his enforced apathy only seemed to make Viktor more and more wary around him.  
  
“We should listen to the radio” He said, playing it safe “Do you want some music?”  
  
“Listen to whatever you please” Viktor stood up from the table and put the dishes in the sink, as cold and aloof and ever, making Yuuri’s plan backfire.  
  
He wanted him to stay, he wanted to talk to him like they always did, and he had thought that maybe some music would set a familiar mood. But the antenna didn’t seem to work properly, and he couldn’t find any hearable station.  
  
As soon as he did, however, and a voice broke out through the speaker, it wasn’t precisely a singer.  
  
“…many enemy planes had been registered in the outskirts of the residential areas, our forces’ speculations are that a severe rounds of aerial attacks may be awaiting the southern towns of the region. Of course we are already preparing a counterattack, but our specialists suggest that…”  
  
Yuuri’s hand froze in place, his skin as cold as the metal of the radio’s knob.  
  
“Viktor…” He stuttered, looking at him, needing more than ever someone to share the weight of reality.  
  
But as soon as he heard the news Viktor turned to leave and closed the door to his room behind him, leaving Yuuri in the kitchen alone.  
  
It wasn’t the first time there was a major bombing. In fact, it had happened many times before. Luck was a twisted, incomprehensible thing, and Yuuri didn’t know what kind of wicked force got his house to stay standing. One explosion was usually enough to demolish an entire building, sometimes two, sometimes three. The closest they had been to getting hit was the day they targeted the Iglesias’ house two blocks away. That one time, the ground had shaken so hard some books fell from the shelves, and his mother had accidentally dropped a glass bowl she was using to cook. He remembered how his whole family had gathered to hug in the living room; how he held Viktor’s hand, who was so far of his loved ones, praying for them to be safe.  
  
Ironically, he remembered how lucky they felt. How lucky they considered themselves to be alive.  
  
But that night, as Yuuri tucked himself in bed, he couldn’t really think the same.  
  
He was trembling, curled into a ball, his full head beneath the blanket as he breathed the same air for over an hour. He wanted to block the noises, the flashes of the explosions entering through the curtains. The whistling, the damn whistling. The singing of yet another sentence falling straight onto god knows who, prolonged and acute, eternal, until it finally made impact. While the missile shrilled, while it was still on the air, it was meant to no one and everyone. To anyone. Impossible was to know where the next one would drop. And as Yuuri’s teeth clinked and clenched and his toes curled under the sheets, he could do nothing but cry and pray silently for everything to stop.  
  
Every now and then, a plane would fly way to close to the house, and he would rub himself onto the mattress as if it could absorb him. No matter how many nights, how many months, how many years, it was impossible to get used to the raid. He could get used to the overall doom, the memories and the knowledge of thousands of fatalities, the sound of shooting in the distance and the streets smelling like old blood and death. But there was no way of adapting the heart to the thought of no beating, getting it used to the threat, the danger, the mousetrap their lives had become.  
  
A particularly close missile brought his clock to fall from the nightstand, a white flash of bright entered through the window and he let out a raw scream. He covered his ears with his hands, hard, pressing as tight as he could until he heard nothing but his own blood running through his veins. He was going to die. There was no other option. There was no chance he could be lucky enough to survive this time. He was going to die that night, with his face pressed onto his knees and his fingers pulling from his own hair as he cried. Because leaving the bed, the room, the house, was no form of evasion. The next bomb could fall right onto his floor tile or maybe next door or three blocks to the left. He was going to die, and there was no escape.  
  
“Yuuri?”  
  
The chaos outside might have distracted him from the creaking sound of the door, because next thing he knew, Viktor was staring at him from the doorframe.  
  
He was crying, too.  
  
They looked at each other for some full seconds, the scene pitiful, as the walls continued to soak and spread the screams outside, and the room got constantly lit by the flash of distant explosions. Yuuri then realized just how wretched he must have looked, how feeble, with his hair a mess, his cheeks soaked with tears and his neck damp in cold sweat. He stood still, nails clawing onto the mattress as Viktor walked all the way across the room towards his bed. Neither of them said nothing, they didn’t need to. They both knew what they had to do.  
  
When Viktor hugged him, Yuuri already had his arms wide open to fit him into the embrace. He could feel him trembling within his hold, his fingers clenching onto the fabric of his clothes with every minimum noise they heard as he hid his face on his neck. He wanted to comfort him, to tell him everything would be alright, but he was way too busy trying to convince himself first. They were using one another, and they both knew it. They were clinging onto the other’s heat like parasites, desperate for any source of contact, for any shoulder to cry onto. The feeling of another heart, beating as fast and wild against theirs, was the first sign of life they had got in hours.  
  
Yuuri breathed onto his shirt, it smelt like sweat and nerves and so human he couldn’t stop inhaling it. He traced his fingers through the short hairs of his undercut, through his stiff shoulders, his pulsing neck. He was alive. No matter if the world was ending outside, Viktor was still alive and his skin was still warm and there was blood running through his veins. It made Yuuri feel alive, too. Alive, and somehow safe.  
  
When the next bomb exploded, not that far away, he felt him sob onto his skin and for a moment, Yuuri thought that if he could cancel any noise from existence, it would be the one of Viktor’s crying. Without thinking, he took both of his hands to cover the other’s ears. He pressed hard, releasing his tension through the hold, seeing his own pulse tremble as Viktor stared back at him. Through the dimness of the room, he could barely see nothing but the shine of his teary eyes, glinting with every flash of light that entered through the window, pupils minuscule and scared and begging, begging for something Yuuri couldn’t really give him.  
  
He caressed the tears away with his thumbs and mouthed a shushing. Viktor pursed his lips, taking his own hands to stroke Yuuri’s, before he removed them to cover his ears as well. His palms were soft. So soft, and so warm and big, they almost managed to muffle every noise. But it wasn’t the blocking of the sound what made him deaf to the hell outside, but the bare touch of his skin against his, the intimacy, the returned favor. As they looked into each other’s wet eyes, legs tangled and noses almost touching, they breaths were finally able to ease.  
  
He knew he wasn’t safe, he knew Viktor could protect him from no harm. But it was better, somehow. There was no logical explanation for the warmth and the ridiculous contentment he could absorb from his embrace. At least, no explanation he was willing to accept.  
  
“Viktor?” He murmured, hands still pressed onto his ears, but he seemed to listen all the same “How did people realize you liked men?”  
  
Viktor hummed thoughtfully, unsurprised by the question, as he let go of Yuuri’s face.  
  
“Why so curious?” He asked, but it wasn’t teasing. There was some sort of resistance in his voice, some sort of caution that almost made Yuuri take his words back. But the sound of Viktor’s talking was way better than the noises coming from the streets, even if it was wary or remorseful.  
  
“I don’t know…” Yes, he did know. He had known for so long “I just need to know”  
  
The use of that word, the evident and delator need, seemed to soften the other’s expression a bit. Apparently, he knew too.  
  
“I was a regular client at a certain tavern…” He breathed out “A certain tavern, that was concurred by certain kind of people…”  
  
“You mean it was…?”  
  
“Yes, it was a place where we could meet other men like us. And we would chat and drink, you know? …I guess they just made a list of the men they saw in there and now they are hunting them”  
  
Yuuri felt a hand rubbing circles onto the small of his back.  
  
“Just because of a bar?”  
  
“Just because of a bar” Viktor sighed “And that was before they burnt it down”  
  
“What?” He hiccupped a small gasp “Just like that? They burnt it overnight?”  
  
“No, Yuuri. They burnt it in broad daylight, with people inside”  
  
A shiver broke through his spine like an arrow, pushing every single hair in his body to sand on end, and his eyes to shot open. He covered his mouth, trying to repress the bubbling fear, the steam of his boiling gut powering his heart to race.  
  
For a second, he could literally feel the flames biting onto his flesh.  
  
“Oh my god” He shrunk onto his skin, knowing that was the punishment people got when they felt the way he did “Did you…did you know any of the victims?”  
  
Viktor swallowed hard, and when the next tear rolled down his cheek, he wasn’t looking at him in the eye.  
  
“My former boyfriend”  
  
Yuuri didn’t suppress the sob that escaped his lips, nor the sudden need to hug Viktor close, as he cuddled further onto his hold and wrapped his arms around his neck.  
  
“I’m sorry” He cried onto his clothes “I’m so sorry, Viktor”  
  
Another bomb fell outside, loud a brute and devastating, and Viktor hugged him back.  
  
“Don’t be sorry” He whispered “You are the closest I felt ever since to being loved”  
  
Yuuri remembered Saturday, how he had acted ever since, how he had avoided him and how heartbroken Viktor had seemed.  
  
“I love you” He whined, wanting to leave no place for doubts “I do love you, Viktor”  
  
Another bomb. This time, on their same block.  
  
Just pretend they are fireworks, his mother had said. But as Viktor leaned in and kissed him right then, he was pretty sure that was what fireworks really felt like.  
  
The neighbors were screaming. Yuuri could hear voices he knew way too well shouting names he knew as well. The ground was shaking, the chandeliers were swinging, and the plates and glasses they had used for dinner were falling and breaking in the kitchen. And Yuuri knew, once again, that he was going to die.  
  
But he wasn’t crying anymore.  
  
Because, if he didn’t die right then, he was probably going to die tomorrow. Or the day after, or maybe the next week. Being it hunger, bombs, or his undying love for another man, he was going to get killed.  
  
And if that was going to happen, if he was going to die a pitiful, vicious death, he wanted it to be just like that. In his bed, wrapped between Viktor’s arms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again for reading, but I have some little news: Don't expect next chapter within this week, I'll be traveling to Japan tomorrow (yayyy 28hs on a plane) and so I won't have time to write. I'll try to think about the chapter in the meantime, and I hope I get to write it for the following week. 
> 
> Have a nice day! And pretty please, if you can, leave a comment! It helps me improve!

**Author's Note:**

> Pretty please leave comments? I would love to hear your thoughts and your ideas for future years/centuries!


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